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The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side photo

"The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side"
The Magnetic Fields 
69 Love Songs
1999

 

When I was a teenager, I got robbed a lot.

This was the mid-1970s, and starting at age 16 I lived alone on East Second Street and Avenue A in New York City. I was short and scrawny. I wore glasses with thick frames and lenses. I bought my clothes from a man who sold rags from a pushcart. I was an easy, if not an affluent, target

I took the muggings passively. My first mugger explained to me the wisdom of that approach. I was walking on the Bowery one night, and I heard a shout from a nearby parking lot: “Get that boy!” Four or five guys surrounded me. The one facing me calmly explained that resisting made no sense because they would without hesitation make me sorry I had been born. I gave them my five dollars, which was about what I usually had in my pocket.

What could I do? I saw getting robbed as a fact of life in this city, especially for someone like me—a quiet person. A weak person. Barely a person. Each time I was robbed, my heart beat rapidly. But there was also the sense of calm in knowing that events were playing out appropriately according to everyone’s roles, that I was relaxing into the hands of professionals.

One winter day, I was walking down Avenue A. I was wearing a cloth coat over an old leather jacket. I was about three blocks from my apartment and eager to get out of the cold when I heard yells, and with blurry speed I was surrounded.

When I was able to focus on the people surrounding me, I saw that they were shorter than I was. Nobody was shorter than I was. Unlike the calm, businesslike muggers of my past encounters, they were bouncing around and yelling. I realized that they were kids.

The one blocking my path and said, “Gimme your money or I’ll cut you.” He waved something near my face that looked like a small knife.

I had only three dollars. I didn’t want to get stabbed. But I said, “No.”

“Gimme your money.” The others continued to yelp and jump around. We were standing in the middle of the sidewalk. People looked, but no one stopped.

With a tone of scorn that surprised me, I said, “I’m not giving my money to you.”

One of the kids kicked me on the chin. For a moment, I wondered how he had been able to get his leg that high. The first kid waved the knife. “Gimme. Your. Money.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. I reached under my coat and pulled the three dollars out of my pocket. I didn’t own a wallet. “I’ll give you one dollar.” I separated it from the other two and handed it to him.

He snatched it out of my hand and jabbed the knife into my arm around the bicep. I didn’t notice any signal, but the gang ran off, bouncing and whooping like kids in a storybook playing cowboys and Indians.

I looked at my arm, but couldn’t tell how far the knife had penetrated through the coat and jacket. My chin felt sore.

I watched them recede, then resumed my walk. I felt different. I felt taller. My shoulders felt broader. I felt whole. I knew I was still small and weak, but I had found something—the point where logic turned off, where self-preservation turned off, where powerlessness turned off. The point where instinct took over. And it seemed to me, as I walked the last blocks home, that my instincts were strong and pure, and that perhaps I could depend on them for the rest of my life.

When I entered my apartment, I saw that the window off of the fire escape was open and my stereo was gone.

 

Drink pairing: Maker's Mark neat.

 

https://open.spotify.com/track/2pL9xr4Mznff997e4jcoos?nd=1

 

image: Robert Fromberg


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